Say cheese… Ontela lands $10 million

Ontela founder Dan Shapiro had a memorable Monday last week that included two life-altering events.

Not only did the wireless entrepreneur learn that his wife was pregnant with twins, but he also found out that his other baby — the 2-year-old Seattle startup Ontela — had scored $10 million in venture funding.

Shapiro

“It was one of the most amazing Mondays I’ve ever had in my life,” said Shapiro, who was receiving wire transfers from his investors while looking at ultrasounds with his wife at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle.

If that wasn’t enough, the company also inked a deal to provide its PicDeck technology to an undisclosed wireless carrier and announced a partnership with its first GSM customer, Cincinnati Bell Wireless. “It was a pretty full day,” said Shapiro, who took breaks from holding his wife’s hand during the ultrasound to check e-mail.

Now, Shapiro will have plenty of cash in the bank as he looks to expand a service that helps consumers seamlessly transport photos between camera phones and personal computers.

Ontela has already had some success winning customers, with Altel, Cellular South and Cincinnati Bell Wireless signing up in the past seven months. Those carriers are charging customers $2.99 per month, with Ontela receiving a portion of the sale.

The 32-year-old declined to say how many people are using the service, though he estimates that about 70,000 photos have been transported using the technology.

“More importantly, there has never been a support call for a lost photo,” he said.

The $10 million round was led by Steamboat Ventures, the venture capital arm of The Walt Disney Co. Existing investors, including Oak Investment Partners and Voyager Capital, also participated. Total funding now stands at about $15 million.

As a result of the investment, Beau Laskey of Steamboat Ventures is joining the board.

The money will be used to support business growth. Shapiro said the biggest challenge right now is keeping up with demand from wireless carriers. The company has a vigorous testing process in which it runs the software on every network and every phone supported by carriers. That means — after integrating with billing systems and testing for select phones — it can take as long as six months to install the technology.

“Right now, we are putting every resource we can on getting carriers launched,” said Shapiro.

To help with that, the company plans to nearly double in size from its staff of 30 people. It recently moved into new offices on the third floor of the Smith Tower to accommodate the growth.

Ontela continues to focus on selling its software to wireless carriers, with no plans to offer the application for the upcoming iPhone application store. Shapiro said it makes more sense to focus efforts on agreements with carriers.

The company also is exploring ways to transport video between camera phones and PCs, a technology that Shapiro said already works in tests but at this time has limited market appeal. According to internal surveys, only about 9 percent of camera phone users regularly shoot video.

Still, he said, video is not “too far in our distant future.” And he said there are other products in development on how to move data between different devices.